Snurched from Jay Lake, who snurched it from everybody and her sibling:

If you’re someone who doesn’t know me very well or at all, feel free to ask me a question. Maybe it’s  something you don’t know about me that you think you should, or something inane.  Doesn’t matter, it can be anything.  Don’t be afraid. 

I wasn’t going to get started on this meme, but I like Jay’s twist:

Iin the same comment you ask me a question, you have to tell me something about yourself.

So ask a question, but be sure to tell me something about yourself too, or else I stubbornly won’t answer.

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The rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Okay, here’s mine:

“With all the security devices you’ve got?”

I guess the fun is to see if anyone can figure out what it’s from, or else to see what wacky sentences show up.  I’ll give some hints: this book was published in December 2005 by a well-known author who has won many awards. 

via Andrew Wheeler

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FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:
1. Assistant Editor
2. Bookseller (at Waldenbooks, Books a Million, and B&N)
3. Admin. Assistant at a Law Firm
4. Tech Writer

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
1. The Princess Bride
2. Fight Club
3. Sling Blade
4. Predator

FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN:
1. Perth Amboy, NJ
2. Winter Park, FL
3. Port St. Lucie, FL
4. Cutler Ridge, FL

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
1. The West Wing
2. The Wire
3. Lost
4. Survivor

FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. The Bahamas
2. North Carolina
3. Virginia
4. Disney World

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
1. www.bloglines.com
2. mail.google.com
3. F&SF Message Board
4. wwww.a9.com (my homepage, where I keep all my bookmarks)

FOUR OF YOUR ALL-TIME FAVOURITE RESTAURANTS:
1. Great Wall (a Chinese restaurant in Port St. Lucie)
2. Rosario’s (a pizza place in Hoboken–besides great pizza, they make a mean cajun chicken salad)
3. China King (a Chinese place in Winter Park)
4. Can’t think of anything else

FOUR OF YOUR FAVOURITE FOODS:
1. pizza
2. baked ziti
3. mixed berry smoothies
4. dried apricots

FOUR SCHOOLS YOU’VE ATTENDED:
1. University of Central Florida
2. Indian River Community College
3. Lincoln Park Academy (which was recently destroyed by a hurricane, in FL)
4. Ukranian Assumption School (a Catholic K-8 school…*shudder*)

FOUR THINGS YOU FIND YOURSELF SAYING A LOT:
1. So anyway…
2. What?
3. What the fuck?
4. Jesus-fucking-Christ

FOUR PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1. South Florida
2. Arizona*
3. Southern California*
4. New Mexico*

*Basically, I’d rather be somewhere where it’s not freezing-ass cold.

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the Cutting Edge (52% dark, 61% spontaneous, 26% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | DARK Your humor’s mostly innocent and off-the-cuff, but somehow there’s something slightly menacing about you. Part of your humor is making people a little uncomfortable, even if the things you say aren’t themselves confrontational. You probably have a very dry delivery, or are seriously over-the-top. Your type is the most likely to appreciate a good insult and/or broken bone and/or very very fat person dancing. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: David Letterman – John Belushi The 3-Variable Funny Test!

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Scott Danielson, one of the editors of SFFAudio, maintains a blog called Science Fiction Story Reader. For his current project, he’s working his way through every piece of short fiction that has won a Hugo, Nebula, and/or World Fantasy award. It’s an interesting list, and Scott lists which ones he’s read, gives a */5 rating, and posts some thoughts about the piece (note: do beware spoilers).

I suggested to Scott that he make his Excel spreadsheet available for download, so anyone else who wants to tackle this project can use it to track his or her own progress. He liked the idea and said he’ll make it available soon.

I thought this was an interesting project, and this screamed “meme” to me, so here it is. Which of these award winners have you read? Bold your selections. I had trouble posting the list to my blog, so I posted my results to a separate webpage.

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(via
Gwenda Bond)

John Scalzi’s new book,

The Rough Guide to Science Fiction Movies, includes a
list "Canon" SF films. 
To comply with the meme, bold the ones you’ve seen.  For
further discussion of the list, see Scalzi’s blog post today, about his


Three Criteria for Science Fiction. 

  The Adventures of Buckaroo
Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
  Akira
  Alien
  Aliens
  Alphaville
  Back to the Future
  Blade Runner
  Brazil
  Bride of Frankenstein
  Brother From Another Planet
  A Clockwork Orange
  Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  Contact
  The Damned
  Destination Moon
  The Day The Earth Stood Still
  Delicatessen
(When the hell is this going to come out on
DVD?)
  Escape From New York
  ET: The Extraterrestrial
  Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
  The Fly (1985 version)
  Forbidden Planet
  Ghost in the Shell
  Gojira/Godzilla
  The Incredibles
  Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
  Jurassic Park
  Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
  The Matrix
  Metropolis
  On the Beach
  Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
  Robocop
  Sleeper
  Solaris (1972 version)
  Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan
  Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
  Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
  The Stepford Wives
  Superman
  Terminator 2: Judgement Day
  The Thing From Another World
  Things to Come
  Tron
  12 Monkeys
  28 Days Later
  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
  2001: A Space Odyssey
  La Voyage Dans la Lune
  War of the Worlds (1953 version)

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According to Tim Pratt: “Steph Burgis was asking writers to post lists of fun things they like to put in books, over in her comments section.”

I’m an editor, not a writer, but if I did write something, I would probably include some of the following things. Might be interesting to the slush writers reading this since I’m probably predisposed toward liking stories with the following SF elements:

1. Skyhooks

2. Dinosaurs

3. Post-apocalyptic wastelands

4. Supersmart animals (intelligence-boosted/evolved/uplifted chimps, gorillas, kangaroos, dogs, mice, etc.)

5. Near future explorations of our solar system

Tim went on to make a list of things he doesn’t like in books and will likely never use. I won’t go so far as to say I actively dislike all of these, but to me they’re in danger of becoming played out, as I’ve seen a glut of stories and/or novels dealing with them lately. In fact, I can think of recent examples of nearly all of these that I did quite enjoy. But like I said, they’re all in real danger of becoming completely played out. Anyway, here’s the bad list:

1. Immortality via computerized consciousness transfer

2. Artificial life forms turning on their creators

3. Elves (from authors not named Tolkien)

4. Unicorns (from authors not named Beagle)

5. Undead/afterlife/ghost stories

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1) The number of books I’ve owned?

Egad. Who could possibly know such a thing? I’d love to know how many I have now, but I’m not anal enough to do an inventory. Plus, that wouldn’t account for the books I bought then traded in at used bookstores. I certainly have enough that I shouldn’t be buying more, especially considering I get quite a few freebies from F&SF, but…

2) The last book I bought?

Natural History by Justina Robson and Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, with the latter being a blog-related purchase (go blogiral marketing!). I was nearly put off purchasing it when Scalzi mentioned that he decided to write a military SF novel solely because that’s what was selling, but in the end I decided that I still wanted to read it for myself, and figured that he should at least get points for being honest about the genesis of the novel. The Robson was just something that had been on my wish list for a while, and I needed to add about ten bucks to my Amazon order to get free shipping.

3) The last book I read?

The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay. Good stuff! Go order a copy immediately!

4) Five books that mean a lot to me: (in no particular order)

1. The F&SF anthologies — One Lamp, In Lands That Never Were, and Fourth Planet From the Sun, because they are the first books I worked on, and one of them is one-third dedicated to me.

2. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, because it’s my favorite novel, and was the first SF novel I read to blow my mind.

3. The Road to Science Fiction, Vol. 3: From Heinlein to Here edited by James Gunn, because it was the anthology that made me learn to love short fiction.

4. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, because it convinced me to give science fiction a try. (I’d read fantasy as a youngster, but no SF.)

5. The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay, because he’s my dawg, and it’s his first novel, and I got to work on it a bit officially (on the sections we published at F&SF) and unofficially (as Charlie noted in the acknolwedgements, “[I] read new additions critically at the very end.”).

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You scored as Materialist. Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements. Existentialist 81% Materialist 81% Modernist 63% Postmodernist 38% Cultural Creative 31% Fundamentalist 31% Romanticist 25% Idealist 19% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

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1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.
Tim Pratt (via his blog)

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.
2034 songs, 10.2 days, 12.33 gigabytes. That includes some audiobooks, and doesn’t include some audiobooks that I don’t have stored in iTunes because there’s no room for them on my iPod.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.
Mezmerize by System of a Down [listen]

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.
“Sweet Relief” by The Haunted, from rEVOLVEr [listen to other songs]

5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs). (I’ll go with “recently”)

1. Monster by STEMM, from their demo [download it]

2. Sworn by Trivium, from their demo [listen to other songs]

3. Black Hearts Now Reign by Unearth, from The Oncoming Storm [listen with the flash player]

4. Therein by Dark Tranquillity, from Projector [download it]

5. Bleeding Mascara by Atreyu, from The Curse [listen to other songs]

6. The five victims to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton.’

You. The first five of you who read this. Do it!

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